Tag Archives: gas

As most of you who have visited my page before will know, I own a 2008 FordEscape, the XLT package with all wheel drive. In the winter it performed like a champ, except for minor little issue… filling up the gas tank in temperatures below 0’C was painful. I have since found out that Ford issued a TSB about filling up in cold temperatures… yeah, not that it does me any good. Over all, I still rate it a good little truck (yes, I call it my truck). By the way, here’s my updated Fuelly banner:

So, back to why I am discussing my truck, yet again. A few weeks ago, I started to notice a vibration while turning and accelerating at the same time. It wasn’t that bad at first, and definitely not as bad as when the ABS Tone Ring (This link will show you a bad ring, and how to replace it) went bad on me in March, which I don’t think I wrote about… anyway, the little metal ring cost $18, the labour almost $400… yeah, back to the new problem.

Over the next few weeks, the vibration has been getting worse, but I have been able to pin down some facts.

Vibration is noticeable while accelerating between 18 and 24 km/h. Accelerating really slowly makes it less noticeable.

Vibration is again noted between 43 and 48 km/h, but since the truck is moving faster it is at a higher frequency.

A slight vibration can be felt while decelerating through the above speed ranges.

Climbing my hill (Park Ave) at ~20km/h will cause the vibration to be so strong it shakes the crap out of the centre console.

Now, I took it into a repair shop and they diagnosed a bad from swat bar link, again a cheap part (though they quoted me $70, I can get them online for closer to $20) with a nice labour charge dumped on top. This did not fix the problem… So, being me, I went all Google ninja and have come to the conclusion that the problem lies in the drive train linkage from the front of the truck to the rear.
Today (maybe), I’ll be having my brother in-law drop the drive train down and look at the housing and u-joints, as we suspect they might be ceased. I will update the outcome later.

Hopefully today’s ‘Blackout‘ by some of the biggest and most popular sites on the internet has brought more attention to the proposed SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act)and it’s senate counterpart PIPA (Protect IP Act)bill, that will effectively push the internet as we know it back 20 years, or as I like to call it, Dark Ages Online*.
I’ll give you my take on SOPA, and for the longer (and professionally written) opinion, check out this article from Gizmodo.
Basically, SOPA is designed to give motion picture, television and music companies the right to have any website they find that may contain copyrighted content, shut down. This is primarily designed to stop piracy, but has the potential will really give the MPAA and RIAA free reign to do shut down legitimate websites without just cause. A good example of this would be a Youtube video of, let’s say a baby, dancing to a music video, let’s say for Beyonce, that you happen to record with your camera, then upload to Youtube. Now this video gets a lot of views, lets say 26 bazillion!, and also gets noticed by the RIAA. They would now be able to contact Youtubes hosting provider and have the site, not just the video, but the entire youtubeverse shut down. I call shenanigans!
Now take that last paragraph and multiply it by all websites that are hosted in the US, or use the most popular domain suffixes, think of .com, .edu, .net and .gov, and you will probably find that it works out to more than sixty-six percent of all the internet as we know it. These websites and domains could be shutdown.
Americans, please write to your congressional representatives and let them know that you will not stand for this. Everyone else, contact all your Amerifriends and educate them about SOPA, PIPA and internet freedom!
Btw, such a video does exist… and have like 26 bazillion views.

Oh yeah, I did mention Gasoline. My fill up wonders continue. I filled up on Tuesday, January 17th at my regular Esso in Fredericton, at my normal pump (Lucky number 7), and with a temperature hovering right around freezing… yeah, pump only stopped on me once. If you’re lost, see my previous musings about Esso pumps hating me and the further woes of filling up.

*Dark Ages Online – I should make a game about having dial up internet 20 years ago… maybe an MMO! Patent Pending!

In my previous post, I mentioned that I am having great fun with Esso pumps when it is cold out. Now that temperatures have been going up and down like a good roller-coaster around here last week, so of course when I need to fill up again, it’s just above freezing.
With the limited selection of stations I have on the way home from work, I decided to go against my better judgement and roll into an Irving. The prices were still pretty close to what I would pay without my SpeedPass, so it was’t too much of a hit to the wallet.

Now to jump a little from the main topic, I own a 2008 FordEscape. Not the best on gas, and it has a surprisingly small gas tank for a vehicle it’s size. I like it, a lot, handles well in bad weather and a rather decent ride for my drive to work, which is close to 100km away… making my round trips daily almost 200km’s, leading me to have to fill up every other day (though I could get away with 2.5 trips, the gas is almost 10cents cheaper in Fredericton). I decided that to get an idea of my fuel consumption and how much I am spending, to track all my fill-ups using Fuelly, which allows you to input your odometer reading, the fuel amount and cost per litre to give you figures on your L/100km and M/Gallon, along with tracking your weekly, monthly and yearly costs. Below is a banner that represents my Escape since I bought it in August 2011.

It should link you to my profile, where you can see how far I have driven, how much I spend on gas (I really need to explore car pooling…) and some consumption analysis.

Now back to the gas bit, I stopped at the Irving and filled up self service, and even their pump stopped on me 4 times while I was filling up, but at least it let me squeeze the pump all the way, unlike the Esso pumps. To get better data, I will need to try the Irving again when it is minus 10 or so, just to see if the pump stops more frequently, and I need to try the Esso again with the temperatures at or just above freezing.

So it seems when the temperature outside drops below freezing, that the gas pumps at any Esso gas station start acting really funny… Normally I can fill up my 2008 FordEscape by just inserting the fuel nozzle and squeezing the handle all the way up, but not when it’s cold.

I’m going to back track a step here, so you understand why I prefer to fill up at Esso. I travel back and forth for work, close to 200km daily, and with the small fuel tank on the Escape, I end up having to fill up every 2 days, though I could do every 2 1/2, I don’t. I have found that filling up in Fredericton to be the first step in saving some money, as they have a Costco that has a gas bar that helps keep gas ~8-10 cents cheaper then the Saint John area, and I also have a SpeedPass, which at most stations will save me an additional 3.5 cents per litre.

Now back to the good part… When it’s cold, if I squeeze the handle to full throttle, the pump will shut off, much like it does when it detects or thinks that your tank is almost full. So I will try again a few times and it will do it again, this does not make me a happy person when it’s minus 15 without the wind chill. I end up having to barely squeeze the handle, to the point that the gas is flowing so slowly that it takes almost 15 minutes to put 50 litres into my tank.

So, being the intelligent person that I am, I decided to do some experimenting.. I have filled up using 4 different pumps at the Smythe Street Esso in Fredericton, 1 pump at the Scholten’s in Grand Bay and 1 pump at the Esso just off the highway in Oromocto to see if I would get any varying results… nope. Next stop will be to try a different brand all together, as long as it is not Irving, I suspect that 10% ethanol isn’t the only crap they are adding to their fuel. Post that, I may have to consider the issue being the Escape.. but I’ll look at that pending more testing.